Current location in this text. Enter a Perseus citation to go to another section or work. Full search
options are on the right side and top of the page.

[134]

Know also that that false presence of purchase was more bitter to the cities than
if any one were privately to filch things, or boldly to steal them and carry them
off. For they think it the most excessive baseness, that it should be entered on the
public records that the city was induced by a price, and by a small price too, to
sell and alienate those things which it had received from men of old. In truth, the
Greeks delight to a marvellous degree in those things, which we despise. And
therefore our ancestors willingly allowed those things to remain in numbers among
the allies, in order that they might be as splendid and as flourishing as possible
under our dominion; and among those nations whom they rendered taxable or tributary,
1 still they left these
things, in order that they who take delight in those things which to us seem
insignificant, might have them as pleasures and consolations in slavery.

An XML version of this text is available for download,
with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted
changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.